According to the Times of London, Japan is in the midst of a veritable explosion of such "girly men," men who don't live up to traditional Japanese standards of masculinity. Of this group, also called "herbivorous males," Richard Lloyd Parry writes,

Definitions vary, but the new herbivores could be described as metrosexuals without the testosterone. Although most of them are not homosexual they have in common a disdain for the traditional accoutrements of Japanese manhood, and a taste for things formerly regarded as exclusively female. Girly men have no interest in fast cars, career success, designer labels and trophy women. Instead, they hold down humble jobs, cultivate women as friends rather than conquests and spend their free time shopping at small boutiques and pursuing in Japan what is regarded as a profoundly feminine pastime: eating cakes.

And supposedly they're a Big Deal. A Japanese designer is marketing a line of skirts and "lacy tops" for men. Another company is selling a line of men's bras, although apparently some gender divisions persist — Parry describes the bras as "designed with manly simplicity, free of lace and frills." And Megumi Ushikubo, author of Herbivorous Girly Men Are Changing Japan thinks two thirds of Japanese men between 20 and 34 have "herbivorous tendencies."

Of course, half the point of a trend piece is to record and perhaps stir up terror at the trend's inevitable destruction of society, and Japan's girly men are no exception. Parry quotes sociologist Masahiro Yamada, who says, "I worry that herbivorous boys are the future of Japan. As young Japanese men become more timid and more averse to taking risks, it will affect the energy and vitality of the society." But the epidemic of girly men, if epidemic it is, may have more specific and more interesting consequences than a loss of "vitality." Slate's Alexandra Harney was actually on the case back in June, and she writes that "grass-eating men are alarming because they are the nexus between two of the biggest challenges facing Japanese society: the declining birth rate and anemic consumption."

Girly men are supposedly uninterested in sex, though some speculate that they simply have bad "communication skills" caused by too many video games and not enough family interaction. Whatever the cause, no sex means no babies, and Japan is suffering because of its shrinking population. Girly men also don't buy a lot of expensive things. It's interesting that a love for "designer labels" is seen in Japan as traditionally male — Harney says herbivores are "more likely to buy little luxuries than big-ticket items." Much like America's vaunted post-recession frugality craze, girly men are scary for Japan's economy — if they won't buy expensive shit, who will?

When you look at it this way, being a girly man seems like a kind of rebellion. Self-identified herbivore Yoto Hosho tells Harney, "We don't care at all what people think about how we live," and his lifestyle does seem like a reaction against certain social pressures. Make money, buy cars, have a kid — it's a pretty familiar prescription for a mainstream existence, whether here or in Japan, but its steps may be geared more toward a particular idea of a healthy society than toward actual personal fulfillment. After all, shoring up a declining birthrate doesn't sound like the most compelling reason to have a family. And now that making money has become more difficult for Japanese men, it's no wonder they're not as enthusiastic about spending it. Maki Fukasawa, an editor and writer who coined the term "herbivorous male," says,

When the economy was good, Japanese men had only one lifestyle choice: They joined a company after they graduated from college, got married, bought a car, and regularly replaced it with a new one. Men today simply can't live that stereotypical 'happy' life.

Sound a lot like what's happening in America. The recession and dwindling job security have made certain male roles — provider, consumer, progenitor — more difficult to step into. In Japan, men are responding by rejecting those roles. Maybe rather than trying to return to a bygone era of buying and babies, Japan and America should accept a more frugal, perhaps smaller population and new definitions of success. The girly men, it seems, already have.

Girly Men Of Japan Just Want To Have Fun [TimesOnline]

Related: The Herbivore's Dilemma [Slate]

Edna Adan, founder of a hospital in Somalia, laid out the inequalities women face in her country. She said Somalian women were dying in childbirth "because nobody cares... [People think] she's dying because she was meant to die. She was not meant to die. She could be safe." She added, "the decision of whether she has treatment must be left to the woman. Often it's a husband or a brother or a father who decides whether she will be taken to the hospital or not." Zainab Salbi of the nonprofit Women for Women International told listeners that oppression of women isn't just a third-world problem, and that one in four American women suffers from domestic violence. "It is really a global issue," she said. She also argued that "we can't actually get into environmental issues or climate change or ending poverty or wars if we don't invest seriously in women."

It's a common statement these days. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are giving issues affecting women and girls lots of exposure, and arguing that resolving these issues will actually reduce poverty and violence. And panelist (and Goldman Sachs CEO) Lloyd Blankfein's statement that "investing in women is investing in families" is no longer controversial. But does that mean the corporate world really cares about women and girls?

Panelist Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, said,

Philosophically, we are committed because it's critical to our own sustainability in the countries in which we operate. A large part of our activities today and in the future are in less-developed parts of the world. So our longer term success is built around the ability to have a productive work force, have communities that are stable. And it's not just financial commitment, but human-resource commitment. [...] funding is not the issue. Not necessarily.

But according to Zainab Salbi, funding is the issue, because women still get only one cent of every development dollar spent around the world. And even those who agree that money is necessary may not care so much about helping women and girls as an end in itself. Jos at Feministing writes, "for the businessmen on the panel 'empowering' women seemed to be more about using them as the person that funds go through." And Blankfein called investing in women "a recruiting tool and a retention tool" for Goldman Sachs.

Helping women and girls seems to be the method du jour both for reducing global poverty and for looking like a socially responsible business. Insofar as this actually leads to the improvement of female lives around the world — and there's evidence that microfinance efforts, at least, do — this is a good thing. And if helping women also results in helping families and societies, that's good too. But Tillerson's lip-service to women's issues and Blankfein's use of them as a recruiting tool are troubling because they suggest that big business leaders think supporting women and girls is the hip thing to do right now. This hipness could lead to real change, but it could also lead to high-profile, low-impact efforts that don't do much good. Environmentalism is in a similar state right now — it's cool to be photographed wearing "green" clothing, but we need a lot more than Cameron Diaz in an organic shirt to stop climate change. And we need more than an oil exec talking about "human-resource commitments" to stop women dying in childbirth. Let's hope we get it.

Global Power Gals [The Daily Beast]
Clinton Global Initiative: Investing In Girls And Women [Feministing]

Following Paris's brief, heartbreaking eulogy (which was reportedly an unplanned portion of the broadcast), every news magazine program, cable news show, local news broadcasts, and countless morning shows replayed (and continue to reply) the footage several times over. Granted, it was the first time that any of Jackson's children — who rarely left the house without their faces covered — spoke publicly, and Paris' words humanized a man, who, for many, remained both a caricature and an enigma. (Even Magic Johnson was so star struck by Jackson, that he recalled being shocked to learn that the late singer ate Kentucky Fried Chicken.)

So it's not surprising that there's growing sense, with each re-airing, that networks are trying to somehow sensationalize her grief. (It also didn't help that, while on stage, many hands of various Jacksons — a family notorious for forcing children into the spotlight — grabbed the mic in front of her face to adjust it for her.) But doesn't a girl her age deserve to have some agency ascribed to her?

Because she was so fiercely shielded from the press for her whole life, we never really got to see much of Paris, or what she was like. But we do know that, throughout most of his life, Michael Jackson was drawn to outspoken women with strong personalities: Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Cher,and Brooke Shields, among others. Even the two women Jackson married, Debbie Rowe and Lisa Marie Presley, were not exactly the type to be pushed around. Is it possible that the strength and spunk shared by Jackson's female companions are the same ones that informed how he raised his daughter?

This isn't much to go by, but judging from the private home video footage released to the media in the past two weeks, Jackson's relationship with his children seemed not only natural, but extremely sweet and loving. In this clip, toddler Paris seems to be displaying a comically cranky attitude toward her father's camcorder:

Seeing that footage immediately reminded me of when Debbie Rowe (who I think must be Paris' biological mother, considering the striking resemblance) snapped at cameramen over the weekend.

Anyway, on both last night's 20/20 and this morning's View, Barbara Walters — who sat with the Jackson family at the memorial service — made special mention of how alert, engaged and self-aware Paris seemed yesterday. (She was one of the first to jump to her feet for a standing ovation when Al Sharpton addressed her and her brothers.) Perhaps Paris was finally sick of the claustrophobic, filtering spokespeople, relatives and masks that have surrounded her and decided to put an end to at least one of the many mysteries surrounding Michael Jackson: His parenting. I think he might be proud.

Related: Paris Jackson's Speech Was Not Planned [People]

Paris Jackson's Tearful Goodbye [Salon]

Lisa Ling, also a journalist, has been referring to her sister and her friend Euna as "girls" in public statements for several weeks. She told the May 31 edition of People, "We desperately hope that at the conclusion of the June 4 trial, the government of North Korea will show clemency and allow the girls to return home to their families. [...] We would like to thank all of those individuals who are organizing to secure the release of the girls." But her use of the word has intensified in a PR blitz following new claims by the North Korean government that Ling and Lee have confessed to intentionally crossing into North Korea to record footage for a "smear campaign" against the country.

On this morning's Today show, Ling said, "it was obvious that the girls confessed to the charges that were levied against them [...] we now hope that the North Korean government will show compassion and allow the girls to come home." And on CNN last night, she called Ling and Lee "girls" at least six times. She reiterated that, "the girls have admitted to whatever charges were levied against them" adding, "we now hope that the North Korean government will just show compassion and leniency and let the girls come home." Asked if she had any message for Ling and Lee, she said,

I would just tell the girls to please stay strong, and know that we are trying to do everything we can, our government is trying to do everything they can, to try and bring them home, and just focus on the day when we can all be together again, is what I would say to the girls.

Laura Ling's cousin Angie Wang also called the two detained journalists "girls" on CBS this omrning, perhaps suggesting a family-wide rhetorical decision. It's possible that the family believe that referring to the journalists as "girls" rather than "women" will make them less threatening to the North Korean government, and perhaps more deserving of compassion and forgiveness. Repeatedly saying "girls" probably goes against much of Ling's journalistic training — in most of her professional TV appearances, the word "women" would be more appropriate — so her choice seems especially conscious.

All of Ling and Lee's supporters appear to be choosing their words extremely carefully to avoid offending the North Korean government and make a quick release more likely. North Korea's claims are bizarre — it says Ling and Lee have confessed to "criminal acts ... prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it" — and any confession seems likely to have been obtained under duress if it was obtained at all. But the families of the journalists have studiously avoided criticizing North Korea or questioning the confession in any way. They merely reiterate that the "girls" are "sorry," and ask North Korea to relent and send them home.

It's interesting that supporters of Ling and Lee have this particular rhetorical tool at their disposal. If the detained journalists were men, no one could ask North Korea to release the "boys." Of course, it's not uncommon to refer to grown women as girls — we've certainly done it, particularly in pop culture stories. Still, the fact that women can still be infantilized well into their thirties, when they have families and established careers, is ordinarily an unfortunate one. In this case, however, if calling Laura Ling and Euna Lee "girls" helps get them home faster, we can't help but support it.

Thanks to video intern Joanna Farah for putting together the clip.

Jailed Journalist's Sister: Show Compassion [Today Show]
Video: Families Plead With North Korea [CNN]
Journalist's Family Speaks [CBS]
N. Korea: U.S. Journalists Were Creating 'Smear Campaign' [CNN]
Families Hold Out Hope For Journalists Detained In North Korea [ABC]

However, in their brief conversation, she did manage to own up to having slept with Klute co-star Donald Sutherland.

In the issue — on sale June 12 — Fox makes it known that she's aware that she's known for her sex appeal more than her acting skills, and true to form, she doesn't hold back from talking about that, or anything else, really. (The pull quote EW used for the cover is the double entendre: "I have a mouth and I'm not afraid to use it.") Reviewing some of what she's said in the past couple of years, it's hard (for me, at least) not to like a 23-year-old who openly talks about farts, fucking, and being a feminist and marijuana enthusiast. Her repeated remarks about not being liked by other females and getting along better with men, can be tiresome, at best, and troubling, at worst, but whether you think she's a straight-talkin' bisexual badass, or an Angelina Faux-lie, it's undeniable that whenever she opens her mouth, for whatever reason, people are listening.

On her mental state:
"I think that I'm so psychotic and so mentally ill that if I could tap into that I could do something really interesting." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"If there's no sun, I go batshit crazy." - Total Film, July 2009

"I haven't gone completely insane, but it might happen soon." - Entertainment Tonight, June 2009

"I have no friends and I never leave my house." - Times of London, June 2009

"My weight fluctuates constantly—I don't really take good care of myself. I just sort of exist and survive." - Elle, June 2009

On men:
"I'm so suspicious of boys-slash-men. I just don't like them or trust them." - Elle, June 2009

"Retards. Ridiculous. So pathetic!" - British GQ, July 2009

"I really don't know anything about being single yet, really. I was with someone from the time I was 18, so I've never been forced to take care of myself. I've always had someone doing that for me." - Elle, June 2009

"I've always gotten along better with boys." - Elle, June 2009

"There are some…actors who have been in the business for a while, who are very egocentric and have been able to sleep with a lot of girls for whatever reason, and because they don't know me they think I'm going to be this little cupcake, this Marilyn Monroe type who's going to bat my eyes and be like a receptacle for them." British GQ, July 2009

"I'm not going to be married - I'm not the marrying type. I know people will say, 'Why are you engaged if you're not the marrying type?' I am impulsive and I love my boyfriend, but I have no plans of getting married any time soon." Extra, April 2009

On women:
"I come across as confident and [women] assume that means that I think I'm hot shit. And that makes them feel bad about themselves and so they hate me." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I go to the set thinking I'm not going to have any female friends, because that's the reality of the business. From what I've experienced, women aren't good friends to one another. When guys want to hang out with you because your personality is badass, women immediately hate you." - Maxim, July 2007

"I'm actually frightened of [Angelina Jolie]. I haven't had the opportunity to meet her and I try to avoid that because I'm afraid. Angelina's a powerful person and I bet she would eat me alive. I guess that is why I'm afraid of her." - FHM, June 2007

"I was joking [about Angelina]! She always seems otherworldly in her power and her confidence. I'm sure she has no idea who I am. But if I were her, I'd be like, 'Who the fuck is this little bullshit brat who was in Transformers that's going to be the next me?' I don't want to meet her; I'd be embarrassed." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I'm not trying to take Cate Blanchett down." - USA Today, April 2009

"I didn't get along with Lindsay Lohan on Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen, but you have to consider that we were 16-year-old girls. I haven't seen Lindsay since then, but I imagine she's grown and become a different person. I know I have. From what I've experienced, women aren't good friends to one another. When guys want to hang out with you because your personality is badass, women immediately hate you." - Maxim, July 2007

"If you want your girls to feel strong and intelligent and be outspoken and fight for what they think is right, then I want to be that type of role model." - Times of London, June 2009

On Zac Efron:
"Zac Efron is my obsession, we're the same person. We're not actually here, it's like Janet and Michael Jackson. He just puts on his wig and a dress, and it's me, and you don't know that. It's one of the greatest mysteries of all time." - GQ Man of the Year Event, 2008

"Well let me tell you what [High School Musical] is really about. High School Musical is about this group of boys who are all being molested by the basketball coach, who is Zac Efron's dad. It's about them struggling to cope with this molestation. And they have these little girlfriends, who are their beards. Oh, and somehow there's music involved. You have to get stoned to watch it." - Esquire, June 2009

"Robert [Pattinson] and Zac [Efron]—they're just too pretty, with the big hair and the suits." - Elle, May 2009

On drugs:
"I hope they legalize [marijuana] and when they do I'll be the first fucking person in line to buy my pack of joints." - British GQ, July 2009

"I've done drugs, and that's how I know I don't like them. I tried several things in order to make an informed decision, but I didn't enjoy anything other than marijuana. Cocaine is back with a vengeance, everyone in every club is doing drugs. A lot of people are on prescription drugs. Celebrities aren't trying to hide it, except where people have camera phones." - Maxim, 2007

"Before I go onstage anywhere, I take a Xanax now." - GQ, October 2008

On Sexuality:
"Well, I'm clearly not ugly." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"Really my only job is to look attractive. I was so angry about that, that I went in the opposite direction. I turned into a really butch bull dyke for, like, six months... Then I went in the other direction. From being a giant motorcycle-riding lesbian, I turned into a zombie. I lost, like, 30 pounds. I was like, 'I'm losing weight for the movie'. I was telling myself I was being method (method acting), which was so outrageous and ridiculous and not true." - British GQ, July 2009

"I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That's what our purpose is in this business. You're merchandised, you're a product. You're sold and it's based on sex. But that's okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I thought it was awesome [being sexualized at a young age]. I was going to a Christian high school and I wasn't a feminist yet." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I think people are born bisexual and the make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who is bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never sleep with a girl who had slept with a man." - Esquire, June 2009

"I'm just really confident sexually, and I think that sort of oozes out of my pores. It's just there. It's something I don't have to turn on." - Elle, June 2009

"If you know how to take control of [being a sex symbol], then it can be powerful. But I have no idea how to handle it yet, how to deal with it." - The Sun, May 2009

"I really enjoy having sex, and that's offensive to some people. Women are the quickest to call other women sluts, which is sad. I haven't met a lot of men who've said, 'You like having sex? What a dirty whore you are!' That's because they wish their wives or girlfriends would have more sex with them." - FHM, 2008

On intelligence:
"I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard." - Esquire, June 2009

"I'm smart and I can be really funny and interesting and I can go toe-to-toe with anybody in a conversation." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson, who I have nothing against, but I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, ‘Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.'" - Esquire, June 2009

"That was taken out of context. It made it sound like I was suggesting she's pretentious. She's clearly book-smart and she allows people to see that every time she opens her mouth. And I was suggesting that for me to do that - people would receive it as though I was being pretentious." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"I've never been a big believer in formal education." - CosmoGirl, June/July 2008

On fame/Hollywood:
"I used to sit back and think, 'Please, Britney Spears has the best life ever—she has everything she could ever want!' But she has one of the worst lives. Her life is a living fucking nightmare. I have panic attacks thinking about her life." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

"We actors are kind of prostitutes. We get paid to feign attraction and love. Other people are paying to watch us kissing someone, touching someone, doing things people in a normal monogamous relationship would never do with anyone who's not their partner. It's really kind of gross." - British GQ, July 2009

"If I show up and give any sort of performance at all, even a mediocre one, everyone will walk away going, ‘Holy shit! Megan did a great job in that movie!' So I'm an overachiever just by default because of the category I've been put in." - Times of London, June 2009

"Oh my God! Screen kissing is f****** gross. This one kid I had to kiss had just eaten. And he passed a piece of whatever it was into my mouth. Not on purpose, like it was in his tooth or something. And it was really salty. I almost cried. I was a bitch for the rest of the day." - British GQ, July 2009

"It pisses me when people fucking complain that I'm too beautiful to get this part. That's bullshit. You wouldn't be working if you weren't attractive. Hollywood is the most superficial thing you could possibly be a part of. And if I weren't attractive I wouldn't be working at all." - Esquire, June 2009

"I've done one movie. And it's not a movie I want to stand on as far as acting ability goes. I mean, I'm not going to win an Oscar anytime soon. I'm not Meryl Streep." - GQ, October 2008

"I would love to do a movie naked; it would be beautiful. No one dares make that kind of film today. They did it in the 1930s in an arty way, so why not now?" - The Daily Star, July 2008

"Maybe, you know, [my next role can be] something that's more of a character piece that doesn't involve a leather motorcycle outfit." - Entertainment Tonight, June 2009

Randoms:
"I'm horrible to live with. I don't clean. My clothes end up wherever I take them off. I forget to flush the toilet. Friends will tell me, "Megan, you totally pinched a loaf in my toilet and didn't flush." - FHM, June 2007

"I am pretty sure I am a doppelganger for Alan Alda. I'm a tranny. I'm a man. I'm so painfully insecure. I'm on the verge of vomiting now. I am so horrified that I am here, and embarrassed. I'm scared," – Red carpet interview at the Golden Globes, 2009

"I wouldn't regret [my "Brian" tattoo] if we weren't together. I can always have a kid and name him Brian. There are options." - FHM, June 2007

"If you eat Chinese food, your farts come out like Chinese food. If you eat Mexican food, your farts come out like Mexican food. And milk, it's like-you can smell the warmth in the fart. My wardrobe on Transformers always smells like farts, and I have no idea why." - GQ, October 2008

"I need to behave in a way that will cause people to take me seriously." - Entertainment Tonight, June 2009

"I don't hang out in strip clubs so much anymore. But when I just turned 18, and dare I say, before 18, it was just my thing. I was just so happy to be doing something I knew my mom would die if she knew where I was. I was going through that stage. I would go with my girlfriends. It was a really fun and loose environment. There's one strip club in L.A. that I would go to called 'The Body Shop.' I was obsessed with it, and I'm in love with Motley Crue because Vince Neil sings about it in 'Girls, Girls, Girls.' I would go there and think, 'Oh my God, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee would come here! It's so amazing!' I don't do that anymore. But every once in a while I don't mind going out with some guys and hanging at a strip club." - GQ, October 2008

The last word:
"I don't understand why people don't have a f—-ing sense of humor. Always assume that I'm being sarcastic." - Entertainment Weekly, June 2009

Megan Fox: 'Fallen' Angel [Entertainment Weekly]

Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls is the first-person account of a young girl suffering from anorexia. It's well-researched and true-to-life, and the author names pro-ana websites and other resources that the characters uses as "thinspiration" by name. It's realistic and powerful and disturbing. And, as such, the Times asks, "In writing about eating disorders, are authors, unwittingly, creating an alluring guidebook to the disease?"

The concern, of course, is that the novel's audience is the very group most at risk for eating disorders, and as such, might take suggestion from the book. But, as one doctor quoted says, "Yes, the book is going to trigger people. Turning on the television triggers people - looking at billboards, going to the computer, walking past a magazine rack." In short, people who are ill are going to feed their illness, and the sad truth is that there are far more direct and compelling resources available for those looking for hints or encouragement. An intelligent book that shows one of the most jarring portraits we've seen of the physical and psychological consequences of ED is unlikely to make a healthy young woman sick, and may well prove salutary and sobering to quite a few.

While obviously educators or librarians have a responsibility to acquaint themselves with the materials kids are accessing on their watch, it seems ironic that we should be troubled by the appearance of a smart, uncondescending book for young women. It is not good books, however realistic their subject matter, that are causing problems of image and self-esteem. It is not intelligenced, nuanced discussions that are provoking distortion. I'm guessing Go Ask Alice didn't turn a generation into drug addicts, but did provide a lot of people with comfort and even more with information and cautionary wisdom. E.D. is a very real issue for teens, thankfully one being discussed, and would we prefer that YA authors, in a position to speak to young people, didn't address it? Kids are impressionable, but they also don't need to be patronized, and no one needs to be protected from intelligent, sensitive work. Whatever our concerns, to target a smart book by a proven YA author seems to me disingenuous, and as any of those conscientiously-compiled banned books lists will shows, censorship of any kind is a very slippery slope.

The Troubling Allure of Eating Disorder Books [NY Times]
Wintergirls [Amazon]

Rebecca Traister's "So you still want to date a banker?" asks: why is the media so desperate to trumpet the anachronistic archetype of sugar-daddy and golddigger? In the past few weeks we've been hit over the head with the hoax group Dating A Banker Anonymous (which, as Traister points out, the Times lapped up eagerly in the unpleasant "It's the Economy, Girlfriend!") and the all-too-real douchebaggery of the Washington Post's "Market for Romance Goes From Bullish to Sheepish: Are Guys With Less to Spend Less of a Catch?" in which youngsters complain about how their reduced portfolios have put a crimp in their social lives.

The truth is, those who are pining for the days of free bottle service and the outmoded gender stereotypes it carries are a tiny minority. More to the point, the proliferation of such stories is misleading: in fact, as men lose their jobs in greater numbers than women, the workforce is increasingly female, and right now a female breadwinner is a more common phenomenon than the whiny leech the media is so fond of. So why do we keep reading about the outmoded dynamic of acquisitive strumpet and hapless douche? Traister suggests that in some wise we find it comforting: a sign that cliches are in their heavens and all's right with the world. Just as rom-coms traffic in well-worn stereotypes, so too do we look for their comforting familiarity in our real lives. As the article puts it, "In hard times, we want to be served stuff that is cheap and comforting: meatloaf, Campbell's soup and tales of women and men that conform to our most dated expectations of gender, money and power."

Of course, it's not just that: as much as anything, we want escapism, and these alleged golddiggers make for good copy. Then too, these women are presented, uniformly, as horror stories: a disgusting Other being forced to reap what they sowed while the rest of us sit back in pious judgment. Traister points out that part of this is our cultural love of watching the rich suffer: In a time when it seems like very few of the Haves are getting their just desserts, we're eager to seek retribution where we can find it. But I'd take it a step further, even if it's not a pleasant step: it would seem we, as women, take an especial relish in punishing those women who'd seek to cut the line with anachronistic wiles. In this regard, the phenomenon may be regarded as misogynistic, sure, but a less simple case than Traister would indicate: there's an element of girl-on-girl shaming that's ugly. Where she asks, why do we take comfort in sexist tropes, I'd say, why do we take such pleasure in seeing other women get their comeuppance? The DABA hoax was perpetrated by women, after all, who saw the rage such a phenomenon could provoke, and on both the Times' website and the blogosphere some of the the harshest comments have come from women. It's we who feel a visceral sense of shame and rage when we see the cause betrayed by such naked avidity and such blatant disregard for gains made and opportunities squandered. We may be pushed to the defensive, but it would be disingenuous to suggest there's no relish to such attacks. The fact that we can't see such cases as isolated but feel the need to distance ourselves is sad and telling. To dismiss this as a simple bit of patriarchal nostalgia ironically does us a disservice: while it may be forced upon us, we are complicit.
So You Still Want To Date A Banker? [Salon]

It's The Economy, Girlfriend! [NYT]
Market for Romance Goes From Bullish To Sheepish: Are Guys With Less To Spend Less Of A Catch? [Washington Post]

Earlier:Underemployed D.C. Douchebags Are Depressed By Recession

Thing is, having read all the other interviews Rachel Maddow has done recently so as not to repeat too much, I realized that everyone had pretty much already asked her just about everything anyone probably ever wanted to know about her and then some. Mostly "some".
Like:

Fictional character she identifies with: Wally Cleaver. Cause he is a dork.

And:

Asked if her television career is the culmination of a plotted path, Maddow laughs. "You mean when I started working on AIDS in prisons, was this where I thought it would end up? Yeah. This is pretty much it. Phase forty-seven of my master plan."

Also:

LESLEY: Did you go out with boys in high school?
RACHEL: Yes.
LESLEY: Spin the bottle, and all that kind of stuff?
RACHEL: Oh, yeah. My prom pictures are hilarious.

And let's not forget this:

"If I'm wearing a gray suit, people aren't going to talk about what I'm wearing," Maddow explains, "therefore, I will wear a gray suit every time I go on television. That was sort of the plan."

And finally:

Mother Jones: You're TV's "It Girl." How does it feel?
Rachel Maddow: It doesn't feel like that.

It was going to be hard to find a question that someone else hadn't already asked her, and I am completely opposed to being unoriginal.

Last week, settled into a booth at a midtown Manhattan bar that serves classic cocktails with rummy deliciousness in my hand, I had a flash of inspiration. And so began our interview.

Megan: So, who makes your lip gloss?
Rachel: I don't know! It's provided to me by the very nice people who work in the MSNBC make-up room. The only thing I know is that one of them that they seem to use every other day makes my lips hurt. That's apparently on purpose? It has some sort of irritant...

Megan: It's a plumper!
Rachel: A plumper? That sounds like some sort of fetish.

Megan: Plumping, it's supposed to make your lips look biggers.
Rachel: Who's into plumping? Well, it's pain, which I don't like. They never warn me, and I can't identify it by sight because I don't watch what the products are as they approach my face. So, I don't enjoy the plumping. But that probably narrows it down as to what brand it is, right? Are there a lot of plumping glosses out there?

Megan: There are a lot of things that will make your lips really large.
Rachel: As make-up? It's a whole class of make-up, not just one brand? Well, then I can't help you. But there is one guy there who has mascara that has a motor in it!

Megan: Like, a vibrating magic mascara wand?
Rachel: You said it.

Megan: I do tend to say things like that. But, um, I've now officially run out of personal questions that no one else has asked you, so it's about to be the most awkward segue ever.
Rachel: It's okay.

Megan: Well, so, to get back to the plumping thing, I'm reminded of the word surge, and Obama has just announced a new Surge in Afghanistan, since the last surge was, like, so much fun.
Rachel: [laughs]

Megan: So, like, the new Surge will be like twice the fun even though it's only half the people and doesn't involve anyone that attended the first Surge going to the second Surge. It's sort of all new people going to the new Surge and all the old Surge people kind of staying there.
Rachel: And it's not a Surge because they'll never leave. It's more like a swelling. A plumping! Rather that a surge. Because a surge would imply some sort of temporary rise and fall whereas I think an escalation would be a better word for what it is they want to do.

Megan: Well, they probably don't want to call it that.
Rachel: Right? Awkward. About the troop levels in Afghanistan, we're in year 8 already. So they're all like, we're going to need a 3 or 4 year commitment. No, no, no, what's you're saying is that we're actually going to need an 11 or 12 year commitment. What are years 11 and 12 going to work out better than, I don't know, years 3 and 4? 7 and 8? 1 and 2? Pick any. We've been there a long time.

Megan: Yeah, George Bush probably should have gone back and looked in Vladimir Putin's soul again and asked him, because the Russians probably know a little bit about that.
Rachel: General Gromov, who was the last Russian general who supervised their withdrawal and was the last person over the line when they left in 1989, said, "Yeah, what we learned is that you can't solve political problems though military means." Duh.

Megan: Wait, so the Russians in 1989 were the Republicans in 1998?
Rachel: Well, not anymore, because we're not leaving.

Megan: Well, so we'll gain Russian-levels of insight into foreign affairs in about 2015.
Rachel: Yes. Well, no, let's see, what year is it now? 2009. So in 2029, we'll be giving the Chinese this advice.

Megan: Sounds like a good plan! Speaking of China, Hillary Clinton went there having hit up Japan, Indonesia and South Korea. That's the same part of the world, right? They're all short and stuff.
Rachel: There is a geographic commonality in the broadest sense.

Megan: Sort of like Canada and Chile.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly, "The Americas." In the same way that Sarah Palin and Alberto Fujimori are representative of the Americas, also South Korea and China are.

Megan: So which leader will go to jail, then, like Fujimori?
Rachel: Which one will send dramatic faxes to his homeland from exile? Hard to say. But I think the amazing thing about Hillary Clinton in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and China is that she timed it to Kim Jong Il's birthday. Kim Jong Il's birthday is a big deal. There has to be a lot of synchronized swimming, there has to be of course dancing, there has to be a costumed procession...

Megan: Sort of like prom?
Rachel: More crappy even then prom, the dancing on the occasion of the Dear Leader's birth. There was, apparently, a mysterious halo that appeared around the moon on the occasion of his birthday this year. Very unearthly.

Megan: Is that how he gets his golf skills? I mean, he only golfed the one time, but 18 holes-in-one, you really can't top it.
Rachel: It's a world record! It's almost as impressive as Pat Robertson holding the international leg press record. Pat Robertson said he could leg press 2,000 pounds, which meant that he would have won the Olympics. It's the same kind of thing. I don't know if they have a Regent University, I don't know if they have something that is as much a representation of the spiritual worthiness of that leader, but...

Megan: I'm pretty sure there's some goosestepping in both places. I can see it.
Rachel: Was it Regent University where Mitt Romney gave the speech about how France limited its marriages to seven years? Or was that Liberty University? I get them confused.

Megan: I think it was Liberty [Ed: Rachel was right, it was Regent]. Liberty's the one that advertises on Washington's subway.
Rachel: Wow. I love that. I love that you can just make a university! I love that! It's accredited.

Megan: I'd bet I could accredit myself.
Rachel: At Hampshire College every year they spray paint quotation marks around the word "College" on the sign out in front of the school.

Megan: I know someone who got kicked out of Hampshire College for doing too many drugs.
Rachel: You know someone who's dead!

Megan: No, in fact, we had drinks about a year and a half ago!
Rachel: "Drinks" you said?

[We order another round of drinks.]

Megan: So back to Hillary Clinton and the catfight she's about the get in with Tim Geithner over China, since I'm sick of catfights only being girl-on-girl. Have you heard about this?
Rachel: The Eyebrows of Doom! His hair is perfect, but his eyebrows are like Eliot Abrams style. His eyebrows are Richard Perle quality.

Megan: Are they Jim Gilmore quality?
Rachel: No, no, no, they're bigger! They're better! They're not reach out and grab you eyebrows, they're Eyebrows of Doom! They're like lifted eyebrows. The whole like crazy arch, death ray eyebrows. Geithner should not be messed with.

Megan: Well, so, the catfight. In the Bush Administration, Henry Paulson since he was like BFF with Wu Yi, and Sue Schwab ended up at USTR but had no power and Condi Rice was all over Middle East policy at State, Paulson got the Strategic Economic Dialogue with China which became sort of the place where most China policy ended up.
Rachel: Right, because his relationship preceded his Treasury Secretary-ness because of his time at Goldman Sachs. Ugh.

Megan: Right, so, Hillary Clinton is all up in China's business on economic policy, taking bits of what turf on China policy got passed to Geithner, going to Asia, taking advantage of Geither pissing off the Chinese during his confirmation hearing and Geithner's need to fix the economy.
Rachel: Hillary Clinton is ready to take up a lot of room! The amount of room there is to be taken up is finite. And somebody is going to take it up. It's exciting to imagine the changes that might happen in our own government and in the world, the range of options that we have as an economy and a military and a government operating in the world, if our State Department matters. And she's grabbing power and installing loyalists, she's completely filling up the policy space and taking over the State Department. It's great!

Megan: And Gates is getting out of her way, too.
Rachel: Exactly, and she can say, well, the Secretary of Defense agrees with me. We haven't been here in a long time. It's exactly the thing I want us as a country to be trying, I don't know exactly how it's going to work out. But the thing that's going to happen is that, when agencies do stuff, they get good at that thing. And when they don't do stuff, they don't know how to do that thing anymore. And so the State Department hasn't taken up this room in a long time, so it's a big calling out of the diplomatic corps. Like, are you capable of taking this stuff on? Are you capable of taking over the primary mission in Afghanistan? Not like support, but are you going to be the front line of what America is trying to accomplish there? Can you? Do we know how? Can we manage our own security? And all this stuff. And it's asking a lot of an agency that has suffered in not silence in exactly, but in quietness for a really long time. And now they're front and center, and they need to step up and build capacity really quickly. Great! It's exactly what I want. But I actually have a question for you, going back to Afghanistan. Who is against it? The war, I mean, not the escalation.

Megan: Besides Barbara Lee? And Sean Penn, I guess.
Rachel: Yeah, who's arguing that we should get them all home?

Megan: Nobody. But who knows that we lost more soldier in Afghanistan in January than we lost in Iraq? What are we there for? What are we fighting for? Are we fighting the Pakistan-Afghanistan border war? Are we trying to stabilize the Pakistan government? Keep the Taliban from coming back? In a very realist sense — and not that I'm a realist in terms of foreign policy — but what was our major foreign policy problem with the Taliban other than that they gave Osama bin Laden safe haven when he decided to blow our shit up?
Rachel: I mean, that was a problem, but Sudan also gave him a safe haven.

Megan: But those were black people.
Rachel: So we didn't invade them?

Megan: Yeah, why would we want to get involved in a morass there that already proved unsolvable when we can prove the Russians were just not doing it right. Like, Africa is such a mess!
Rachel: That's okay, AFRICOM has got it under control, man.

Megan: The whole continent!
Rachel: Yeah, it's AfricCOM. It's not SenegalCOM. It's not Cote d'COM. It's AfriCOM

Megan: It's not CongoCom. Or ZimbabweCOM.
Rachel: That whole country!

Megan: Isn't that how we deal with it?
Rachel: It's easier than learning the boundaries. I don't think we're very far away from the American religious right picking some new obscure opposition movement in Africa to privilege as some sort of religiously-inspired freedom fighter sort of thing.

Megan: You mean, when they're done with Israel?
Rachel: No, like, the new Janjaweed. We're due for that. For American evangelicals to decide on a new mascot.

Megan: Are they allowed to have black people as a mascot?
Rachel: You know, that will be really fascinating to find out.

Megan: I mean, other than Michael Steele.
Rachel: Yeah, he's going to make over the RNC. It's gonna be all hip hop over in the RNC now.

Megan: Maybe he can get Eminem to help.
Rachel: [laughs]

Related: A Pundit in the Country [New York Times]
Rachel Maddow's Life and Career [The Nation]
The Dr. Maddow Show [New York Magazine]
Lesley Stahl Asks Rachel Maddow: What Do You Do at 7 on Sundays? [wowOwow]
Rachel Maddow's Star Power (Extended Interview) [Mother Jones]

Earlier: Rachel Maddow: "I Need To Focus On What I Think, So That I Can Stay Original"

What's especially negative for young girls is the related mental hazard of "'emotion contagion' or 'contagious anxiety,' in which one person’s negative thoughts or anxiety can affect another’s mood, sometimes over a long period." the Times reports. It's a hornet's nest for the adolescent woman! But we knew that already.

Tessa, a Brooklyn teen whose mom says she talks on the phone so much that "sometimes I think they just like to hear each other breathe," tells the Times: “Sometimes we get into disagreements and we have to settle them. My friends think that my other friend did something wrong, but she didn’t do something wrong. Sometimes it makes the situation worse than where we were when we began. It spiraled into something bigger than it was.”

For moms out there, shrinks say to watch out for obsessive modes of thinking in your daughters — even if you fall prey to those obsessive modes yourself. "It certainly does seem to be a female behavior, and grown women do it, too, ruminating about certain issues and experiences. It can become a mutual complaint society," psychologist Toby Sitnick says. The mutual complaint society sounds like a club that would have me as a member!

Girl Talk Has Its Limits [NYT]

"They keep their boyfriends warm at night??" I remember whining at my dad (who did something like roll his eyes and say, "Maureen, no one took the Beach Boys seriously until 'Pet Sounds'," as if that was something I should have known.)

But anyway, in the spirit of nostalgia and slow news days, I started trying to remember other things that used to get me, like, RAGING mad on behalf of womanity. The Good Earth. (Meanwhile, the Good Earth movie, which was full of white actors, was offensive on numerous other levels pertaining to civil rights, but that's another story.) The year our monsignor fired all the female altar servers. My mom ranting about how she never should have taken my dad's fucked up surname. Oh my god, and all old movies. Below, a clip from a 1961 movie musical that STILL TOTALLY STILL MAKES ME WANT TO KILL MYSELF, even as it is also almost hard to look away and years later I ended up using this movie to appease girls I babysat. In Rodgers' & Hammerstein's defense, Nancy Kwan is, at least, legitimately Asian:

Pretty much everyone ignored that, until Bonnie Erbe at U.S. News & World Report pointed out that using the word "sweetie" is just ever-so-slightly offensive. As an Northeastern girl now living on the border of the South, I cringe when people call me "sweetie" — but I know women who don't mind at all. Is it a regional thing? Or is it just always an obnoxious diminutive? And why did it take two days for anyone to notice?

Obama's 'Sweetie' Problem [US News]
Obama Gets "Very Flirtatious" At Campaign Stop [Huffington Post]